Devendra Banhart - What Will We Be

 On What Will We Be, Devendra Banhart finds himself in a period of transition. His seventh album and major label debut has Banhart retaining his formula of beard-y, bilingual, Tropicalia-infused guitar pop.

Banhart sticks with his nonsensical, cloyingly naive lyrical scribbles (“Travelling by choo-choo train/we know where we just don’t know when”). He holds back, however, from the more bizarre imagery that defined his previous albums. Although he doesn’t record his songs on friends’ answering machines anymore, the recording fidelity is still fuzzy. And the songs, though no longer the product of loose collaborations with sometimes dozens of musicians, still have a loose, improvised feel.

But B-Dog has some new tricks up his proverbial sleeves. He throws in some brushed drums and jazzy flourishes on “Chin Chin & Muck Muck,” casting himself as a lysergic John Cheever in his meditation on suburban alienation. On “Foolin’,” he gives a reggae and campfire sing-along hybrid a try. The infectious glam throb of the appropriately-titled “16th & Valencia Roxy Music” is a jarringly streamlined piece of pop craft. That’s not to say that all genre forays succeed as well: “Rats” is a middling piece of plodding Stooges-inspired doom rock that goes on about five minutes and eight seconds too long.

The loose, ephemeral charm of the album is its undoing, as it doesn’t leave enough a taste in the listener’s mouth—good or bad. Still, not an altogether bad album to while away a sunny afternoon playing Hacky Sack with the bros.